


Prompt: Royalty

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [54]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Codependency, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 07:36:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6365107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The look on Pietro’s face is one Wanda knows well and has long feared the consequences of. “I shall make it work in our favour,” he promises. “I owe you that much. You made it work in our favour to release me from the Purifiers. I shall make it work in our favour to release you from father’s foolish schemes.”</p><p>In the distance Lorna’s arrows flash in the sun towards the archery butts, and Wanda keeps her eyes fixed on them as Pietro tucks her close in embrace. It is a simple enough thing to get out of this new betrothal, but preventing father from making more... Pietro’s recklessness is not always the best of traits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt: Royalty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wandasmaximoffs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wandasmaximoffs/gifts).



> Written for a prompt on my tumblr, readable [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/141739181465/rolls-in-like-medieval-royalty-maximoffs-to-do). The twins sound rather different here because they are a) speaking their language fluently and b) speaking it in a medieval court setting as royalty.

**i.**  
The first time Wanda leads men to war Father is sick and Pietro is being held hostage by their neighbour nation. It is not really a _war_  per se - the men serving under her, riled though they are at serving a woman, call it a sortie - but it _is_  a militant mission.

Father is ill, mother is long dead, and the heretic nation of Purifiers next door has kidnapped her twin brother.

There are rumours, in the palace, that when she is angry red light sparks from her eyes, and that she sold her soul to the devil that she should never have to marry. Other rumours say that she and Pietro performed unholy rites to gain the devil’s favour, and that is why Pietro fights so well, why she is so tactical. Other rumours still speak only of those supposed unholy rites, and sometimes Wanda really resents Father’s decision to allow people to believe as they will, and not make their faith the faith of the nation.

People might stop thinking such foul things of she and Pietro, in that case, or at least have the manners not to speak them aloud.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
Wanda has always been good at tactics. There is a reason their father refuses to play chess with her anymore, and a reason she has thus far managed to evade every attempt to tie her to someone in a betrothal or engagement. Watching the castle where they keep her brother it is _easy_  to see the ways she might enter, and simple enough to do so.

She takes the guard captain with her - one Simon Williams, nicknamed by the guardsmen “Wonder Man” for his own tactical skill - and they go plainclothes, slip into the castle, past the guards.

Simon manages to find two spare sets of armour and disguises himself, and Wanda picks a pocket to gain the key to her brother’s cell. Then, she follows on behind Simon’s armoured form, like any serving girl, the second set of armour wrapped beneath sheets as they head up and up to the tower where Pietro is being kept.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
“ _Pietro_ ,” Wanda breathes when they enter, armour and sheets spilling from her arms as she drops to the ground beside him. “It is me,” she murmurs. “We have come to get you out.”

Pietro changes quickly, and tucks all of his oddly coloured hair - another reason people make up stories about demons and them - under the helmet. 

The descent is oddly swift, undisturbed, and Wanda eyes everyone warily as they make their way to leave. She does not breathe easy until they are outside and Pietro is swinging into the saddle of his horse.

“Cause chaos,” she tells Simon Williams. “Cover our escape.”

The man nods and turns back to his men as Wanda and Pietro make for home.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
Williams and his men catch up to them when they are a mile and a half from the border, ten miles from the palace they are presently residing in. The ride is tiring - Wanda can _see_  Pietro wobbling in his saddle - but the roads clear readily before the royal guard. 

They arrive in the guard's courtyard of the castle, Lorna already waiting for them, embracing Pietro as he slips out of his saddle.

“I’ve had baths drawn,” she tells her elder siblings. “Father’s fever has not broken yet, but they think it will soon. Because of the illness no one has told him, yet.”

Wanda smiles, and embraces her sister in turn, Pietro already turning to stumble his way inside. “That is good,” she says. “Did you have any trouble while I was gone?”

“None at all,” Lorna says, and she looks quite pleased. “I said you were out hunting and had one of my guards hunt some deer we can pretend are yours.”

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
Wanda washes as quickly as she ever has and waits for Pietro to emerge. She plays chess with the physician that has treated herself and Pietro and Lorna from their earliest days, ever since mother died birthing Lorna. She’s the only female physician at court, had served their mother, and their grandmother before her, and there is no one Wanda trusts more with their health than Agatha Harkness.

Pietro emerges eventually, half dressed, hair still soaked, it’s odd light-dark dichotomy clear as day even when wet. 

“Come on,” Agatha says as she rises, efficient and all business as ever. “Let’s get you looked at.”

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
Agatha leaves the twins after giving Pietro a tonic that made him grimace and a good luck amulet that now rests against his sternum, hanging from a length of leather. She’d covered his bruises with a salve as well, and insisted he use it twice a day until the bruises were gone, but she has done that with every bruise they have ever had.

“Lorna had clothes brought down for you,” Wanda says. “And she ensured that your rooms have been cleaned and prepared for your return. She’s handled everything.”

Pietro laughs, winces, holds the bruised patch on his abdomen. “She’s growing up.”

Wanda’s smile is a sad twist to her mouth, and it is only a moment before Pietro’s hand is gently cupping her jaw.

“She had to grow up eventually,” he reminds her. “Let us be glad it was in something as mild as this rather than something more serious.”

“I am,” Wanda says. “But I still wish she did not have to.” She lifts her hand to take her brother’s, pulls it from her cheek, passes him his clothes. “You are still half dressed,” she points out. “And there are already far too many rumours about us.”

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
The first time Pietro had punched a man outside of practiced sparring was when the lordling in question had spent several months carefully wooing Wanda only to celebrate his betrothal to her with his mistress.

The second time had been simply because their royal father had arranged the betrothal without asking Wanda first.

The third time had been because there was no way in the world he would trust the Purifier princeling with his twin’s happiness.

“Pietro,” Wanda had said, sighing, after the last one. “You cannot punch every man who so much as attempts to win my hand. Just because I do not care to trust any of them after the first does not mean they are inherently evil.”

“Yes it does,” Pietro had replied. “Anyone that would hurt you or Lorna is inherently evil.”

(It was his assault of the last that had, in the end, led to his kidnapping)

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
“Father has arranged another betrothal,” Wanda says, two weeks later. Their father, strong and stubborn as he was, had prevailed over the fever and broken it not two hours after Wanda had returned with Pietro. Two days more, and his physicians certain he was out of danger, and he was arranging matters to his satisfaction again.

And, as ever, that meant attempting to secure a marriage for the utterly disinterested Wanda.

“I don’t know why he insists so,” Pietro says. He is sat beside her on the rug they have had laid out over the grass of the grounds. More accurately, Wanda supposes, he is laying down, eyes shut against the bright light of the sun. Wanda, beside him, is sat with her skirts carefully arranged, just under the shade of the vast spreading oak their father had refused to ever see cut down.

A short distance away they can see Lorna at her lessons, archery from horseback, which had only been permitted after _much_  persuasion, for all their father’s declarations he would see his nation and it’s citizens be equal.

“I do,” Wanda says. Her voice is soft, barely a whisper, and even against the soft wind Pietro hears and sits up in a moment.

His hands cradle hers with all the gentle attentiveness they ever have. “Tell me,” he says. “You play politics far better than I.”

Wanda’s eyes stay on their hands, Pietro’s hands gently holding her own. It is easy to line their hands up, tap fingertips to corresponding fingertips as though playing one of the clapping-learning games Agatha had taught them to help their reflexes. “You know the rumours,” she says eventually. Fingertips tap to fingertips, index finger, middle finger, ring finger, little.

Wanda _feels_  Pietro’s indrawn breath as much as hears it. He is still, painfully so, as she keeps tapping their fingertips in turn. Thumb to thumb, index to index, middle to middle, and so on and so forth.

“They cannot still _believe_  that tripe?” he asks. 

Wanda’s eyes meet his. “People will believe whatever brings them petty pleasure, brother-mine. Speaking poorly of father never goes well for anyone, but of his _children_ … I suppose it gives them some sense of accomplishment to have managed it and escaped punishment.”

“They _should_  be punished,” Pietro says, and Wanda’s fingers wrap around his to make him pause.

“If they were,” Wanda says, “People might take it as confirmation. And even now they are careful to insinuate rather than say. There is yet no grounds to call them slanderous.”

“But they _are_ ,” Pietro says. “And this will not stop until one or both of us are wed elsewhere.”

Wanda’s thumbs stroke over Pietro’s hands and she nods.

“I do not wish to be far from you,” Pietro declares. “We are twins, and it is wrong to part us so besides.”

“Nor I from you,” Wanda says. “But the world does not work in our favour.”

The look on Pietro’s face is one Wanda knows well and has long feared the consequences of. “I shall _make_ it work in our favour,” he promises. “I owe you that much. You made it work in our favour to release me from the Purifiers. I shall make it work in our favour to release you from father’s foolish schemes.”

In the distance Lorna’s arrows flash in the sun towards the archery butts, and Wanda keeps her eyes fixed on them as Pietro tucks her close in embrace. It is a simple enough thing to get out of this new betrothal, but preventing father from making more... Pietro’s recklessness is not always the best of traits.

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
Wanda is quite surprised when she learns that the Attilan delegation means to stay several more days - _possibly_ , their Steward says, _up to a week or two_  - but simply adds in the necessity of dealing with them to her already busy schedule. She is having to field many more of the meetings father does not wish to attend now she has managed to escape his last attempt at arranging a betrothal for her.

She does not know _why_  the Avenging Nation is sending their greatest weaponsmith as a _diplomat_  of all things, but she does know that her father will be furious. Genosha has lost more than it’s share to the weapons of House Stark, and even with their tentative truce - gifted by the hands of their ruling Lord Commander Rogers - Lord Stark’s arrival will do nothing but stir up bad feeling and be taken as an insult.

That he is to be accompanied only by two women, two carts of baggage and no retinue to speak of, and that one of those women is known by their intelligence network to be an assassin only further compounded the issue.

“If,” Wanda says to their father that evening at dinner, “You attempt to see me wed to Lord Stark I shall leave the castle, leave the kingdom and become a hermit in the woods for the remainder of my days.”

They all four of them know that the only riders in the castle fast enough to find Wanda or skilled enough to track her when she does not want to be found are Pietro and Lorna, and that they are more likely to side with their siblings than their father at this point.

“Marriage,” their father finally says. “Is not the point of their visit.”

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
Wanda has seen her brother do many impressive and slightly questionable things at dry state functions before. Even at the more enjoyable balls and dances where conversation could be a bit more free he always found a way to spice it up slightly. Last time he’d convinced the Doctor-King Victor von Doom that it would be a wonderful thing to stir up everyone else and for them to dance together.

He’d started a fad, certainly, for same-sex dance partners, but he’d also started a myriad more rumours about the depravities of the twins, and it _worried_ Wanda.

That he arrived at that evening’s dance with the Princess Crystalia Amaquelin on his arm was only slightly less worrying than some of the things he had done before. Wanda knew Pietro perfectly capable of charming people when he wished to, she’d seen him charm many a courtier at previous dances, some few, she did not doubt, all the way to his bed, given the reports she received from intelligence of courtiers venturing out of his rooms in the wee hours of the mornings.

She hoped her brother had sense enough not to try such charming on a Princess of Attilan, and sister to Attilan’s Queen.

 

* * *

 

 **xi.**  
“Brother,” she murmurs when he joins her at the food table, briefly leaving the visiting princess in conversation with two of her companions and the visiting Lord Stark and his aides.

“Don’t worry,” Pietro says. Wanda raises an eyebrow.

“You abandoned your companion,” she says, and she knows her tone is lighter than it should be, teasing, and she blames the three glasses of wine she drank in quick succession, worrying over what Pietro might do.

She loves her twin, dearly, but she knows he is quite reckless on occasion.

“I left her to handle Stark,” he says, picking some baklava and, for whatever reason, also stuffed vine leaves for his plate. “I refuse to spend any more time in the man’s presence than necessary.”

“Politics, brother,” Wanda reminds him. “Sometimes we must play nicely with the bullies all the same.”

“That,” Pietro says, serving himself a spoonful of stuffed olives, “Is why Crystal is talking to him.”

Wanda does not really know what to make of that.

 

* * *

 

 **xii.**  
“It’s simple,” Pietro had explained to Lorna. “Wanda does not want to marry, not after Lord ‘Declare-my-undying-love-then-fuck-my-mistress’ did exactly that. Father, on the other hand, wants the rumours to end, and so keeps attempting to arrange marriages for Wanda, all of which are getting _worse_. I don’t _care_  to marry, but if I can find someone who understands why it’s necessary then we can take the stress off Wanda.”

Lorna had watched him carefully, chin resting on her fist, thumb tapping on her jaw. “And,” she had added, “if you marry the _right_  person, you and Wanda can both stay here at court. You stay close, because you don’t like being apart, but the rumours finally stop.”

Pietro had clapped his hands. “Exactly,” he had said. “And Crystal - Princess Crystalia - is being surprisingly understanding.”

In the small nook at the end of the library - surprisingly large, even for their family - the light fell through the window. Lorna knew how it would light up the red tints in Wanda’s hair, how it can light up the greenish sheen of her blonde, how it can make still more distinct the black-and-white of Pietro’s.

“Have you talked to Wanda about this?” she had asked. “You know she’s a better judge of character than most.”

Pietro’s head shook. “I want it to be a surprise,” he had said. “It’s our birthday in a week.”

 

* * *

 

 **xiii.**  
It _is_  a surprise in the end, one of a very few Pietro ever actually pulls on Wanda, and one she truly appreciates. Pietro walks into the private parlour their family uses for breakfast with the calm announcement, “Princess Crystalia and I are considering arranging a marriage; if you’d be so kind as to sign the betrothal papers and royal permissions, father?”

Wanda’s piece of bread falls back down to her plate. Their father’s cup of chamomile tea shakes in his hand. The only one not to react was Lorna.

“Father?” prompts Pietro.

“You,” their father says disbelievingly, “And a Princess of Attilan?”

“It would be an advantageous match,” Lorna points out. “Attilan is not a _weak_  nation to be allied to.”

“And,” Wanda says, regaining herself, “It would silence the rumours at last.”

Their father still seems struck dumb.

“She’s quite lovely,” Pietro says. “She’s already asked to arrange to have lunch with Wanda and Lorna, to get to know her potential future sister-in-laws.”

Eventually Lorna stretches out a hand to touch their father’s arm. “Father?”

King Erik Magnus shakes his head to clear it and stares at Pietro. “You managed to arrange this entirely on your own?” he asks.

“Crystal is helping to sort the paperwork on her end,” Pietro says, “and I discussed it with Lorna, but yes. The idea is mine.”

Erik sets down his teacup, sighs, and waves a hand. “Very well,” he says. “Bring me the papers and I shall give my blessing.”

 

* * *

 

 **xiv.**  
“Why?” Wanda asks later, as Pietro walks her and Lorna towards the clearing where they are having lunch with Crystal. Lorna is walking ahead, giving Pietro and Wanda space to talk, and Wanda appreciates the slight privacy it gives.

Pietro shrugs. “So long as we were both unmarried the rumours would continue and father would keep trying to betroth you to people.”

“That does not mean _you_ -”

“I like her,” Pietro interrupts, and Wanda is silent. Pietro has not interrupted her since they were six years old and mother had just died. “I like her quite a lot,” he admits, and his voice is soft.

“Why did you not tell me?” she asks at last, and her tone is nothing but fond.

“It’s our birthday,” he says. “Remember?” He cannot help his smile, not at having achieved this, not at Wanda’s expression of _oh_. “Happy birthday, Wanda. You are free of father’s meddling for the foreseeable future.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes there are a fuckton of references to a bunch of things here points to you if you get them all! Comments are much appreciated!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Prompt: Celebration](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6681655) by [EssayOfThoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts)




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